Relativistic heavy ion physics at JINR: status of the BM@N and MPD experiments

The future accelerator facility NICA (JINR, Dubna) will supply ion species ranging from polarized proton to heavy ions with design luminosity of up to $10^{27}$ cm$^{-2}$c$^{-1}$ for Au nuclei in the region of the collider energy up to $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=11$ GeV. It will complement the existing accelerator Nuclotron, which is being currently upgraded in order to be able to accelerate Au nuclei up to $E_{kin}=4.65$A GeV ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}=3.5$ GeV).These machines will host two heavy ion experiments: BM@N (Baryonic Matter at Nuclotron) and MPD (MultiPurpose Detector),which are described in this paper